Intro and demo videos from famous startups

Allow me to introduce...

Launch and demo videos from successful startups (Before they were famous)

20 videos from companies such as Grab, Uber, Lift and Waze

20

Launch videos

Everyone starts somewhere. As a founder, you know what it's like, you're desperate for the first users and there is so much to do... but you need to do things like "intro videos."

Well, every founder you hope to follow in their foot steps dealt with the same things.

Here's an insight into the founders, their product and an illustration of quite how far they have come.

You can do it to.

Beepi

Beepi was a p2p used car marketplace where customers can buy or sell cars online. They raised $149m before totally flaming out. I heard some pretty outrageous things from friends about their spending...

This is your standard animated minute and a half introduction video from the early days.

Buffer

They have successfully leveraged content marketing and their approach of 'radical openness' to build their brand.

They have raised $3.9m to date. It's not going to be a unicorn, but it's a solid business. They went through a round of head counts to ensure their profitability. You can see their pitch deck here and their term sheet here.

This is Buffer's first explainer video, providing an actual product walk through.

Canva

Canva facilitates graphic design by providing a drag-and-drop design tool and a library of stock photographs, graphic elements, and fonts.

Founded in Sydney, getting to where they are now was a slog! Things seem to be working now having raised $83m to date. You can read the Canva Pitch Deck here.

This product demo takes you through how to use the product. Whilst the current product is far more advanced and has a lot more features, you can see the core product still in it.

Docker

Docker is a platform for distributed applications that allows developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications.

At the start, no one could get their head around the value of it, but now a coder wouldn't live without it. Investors seem to think so, having backed them with $283m to date.

I haven't found a typical video introduction for Docker, for the really technical companies they typically provide technical presentations. So here's a cofounder and CTO do one from the early days.

Front

Front redefines work communication with the first shared inbox for teams. By unifying your email, customer communication channels, and apps in one platform, Front helps teams collaborate efficiently and have more context and visibility into every conversation, to work faster and better together.

This is a typical product demo from Mathilde the CEO going through their first live product.

Grab

Formerly Known as GrabTaxi, Grab is Southeast Asia’s leading ride-hailing platform.

Basically a 1 for 1 copy of Uber. They recently acquired the operations of Uber in SEA- the word on the street is SoftBank, who was an investor in both, decided it was time for people to actually make money.

Interestingly, they started out in Malaysia and were not the first nor the largest. TaxiMonger was the first but lost out arguable due to better marketing execution.

Here is a promotional video Grab used when they first expanded to Manila.

Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club is a monthly membership service that delivers fresh, stainless steel razor blades and other personal grooming products to customers by mail. Home delivery, rather than purchasing through conventional retail stores is an added convenience for customers.

Dropbox

They raised $1.8b before their IPO in 2018 and were valued at $9.2b. Here is the Dropbox pitch deck

This is the first product demo from a young Drew Houston.

Coinbase

Coinbase is a digital currency wallet service that allows traders to buy and sell bitcoin.

When they started, no one really got it, but they seem to have killed the timing, making out like bandits with the bubble in 2017. They have raised $225m to date. This is the Coinbase Pitch Deck.

This is a very brief product demo for a user 'Satoshi' with no voice and naff music.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn, a professional networking site, allows its members to create business connections, search for jobs, and find potential clients.

Who is not on this site? Yeah, it sucks and given it was acquired by Microsoft, it's unlikely to ever get better, but one can hope. You can see the Linkedin series-B pitch deck here.

This isn't their original video, but it's from the early days. They raised $155m before their IPO.

Lyft

Lyft is a ridesharing company in the U.S. that that matches drivers with passengers who request rides. AKA, the other Uber but with a pink moustache.

It's pretty amazing how they have been able to compete, but I guess finding a cab really does suck, right? They have raised $4.3b to date.

Before Lyft, they were called Zimride. This video is a quick demo for someone visiting Zimride.com for the first time.

Quixey

Quixey was a mobile technology company that provided better access and engagement with apps. Basically, a mobile search engine that was able to crawl apps.

They entered the deadpool in 2017. It seems they never found their footing or a steady revenue source, despite replacing its founding CEO, Tomer Kagan, in March 2016 and raising $165m.

This is a 2 minute animated video explaining how it all works in the early days.

Slack

Slack is an enterprise software platform that allows teams and businesses of all sizes to communicate effectively.

Also known as the fastest growing company of all time, they have been able to eclipse all the incumbents by a factor. Interestingly, one person argues that Slack was able to grow so fast and has such high engagement due to the lack of threading. By retaining a Twitter like feed (without as many bots), staff need to continually follow messages.

They have raised $790m to date on some decent terms. Boom.

In typical SaaS fashion, here is a product demo explaining what Slack is from 2015.

Robinhood

Robinhood is a stock brokerage that allows customers to buy and sell U.S. listed stocks and ETFs with zero commission.

Vlad Tenev, CEO said "There were a lot of people who didn't believe in it, and we had to bang down a ton of doors. We were really relentless."

Having said that, it's not super easy when the product doesn't exist yet, requires regulatory approval, and is being launched during a recession!

They seem to be making progress and raised $526m to date.

Robinhood's intro video is relatively unique in that, like Dollar Shave Club, it's an actual video, so more like an ad.

Snapchat

Snap, formerly Snapchat, is a camera company that develops Snapchat and Spectacles.

Lol, they're still going with the camera thing.

Who would have thought that an app for dick picks would IPO at a $33b valuation and raise $4.6b.

From the video, they've come quite a way.

Swarm

Foursquare is a local search and discovery service mobile app that provides its users with personalized local search experiences.

It was a pretty huge innovation when it came out but then lost it's way. They then launched Swarm as another means of checking in.

Swarm is a mobile application that helps friends and neighbors communicate in a fun way throughout everyday activities.

This is the launch video for Swarm (Couldn't find a Foursquare one).

Twitch

Twitch is a social video platform for gamers where more than 100 million gather every month to broadcast, watch and talk about video games.

They were founded in 2007 and raised $35m before being acquired 7 years later by Amazon for $970m.

However Twitch actually started out as Justin.tv. This demo video is a look from the earliest days.

Uber

Uber is a ridesharing company in the U.S. that connects passengers with drivers through a mobile app.

Founded in 2009, Uber's raised $21b to date. It's not exactly been plain sailing though, as sure you know.

This product demo is an insight into the early days when they were focused on just black cars.

Twilio

Twilio is a cloud communication company that enables users to use standard web languages to build voice, VoIP, and SMS apps via a web API.

They raised $261m before their IPO valuing them at $2b.

In this video a cofounder provides a whiteboard overview of how to use Twilio.

Waze

Waze is a mobile navigation app that enables drivers to use live maps, and get real-time traffic updates and other road data.

They raised $67m before being acquired by Google for $1.3b.

This video isn't a demo, but rather a pitch they did at an O'Reilly event in the very early days.

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